In Wednesday’s season finale, the visiting Miami Heat, already assured of the No. 2 seed in the East and an opening-round matchup against Philadelphia, decided to rest Chris Bosh, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, South Beach’s vaunted Big Three.
The Raptors have never had the luxury of resting players, left to confer with trainers on a daily basis to see which player is healthy and available.
Against the Heat, the Raptors had the league minimum eight players, including a bench consisting of Alexis Ajinca, Solomon Alabi and Julian Wright.
The starting unit wasn’t exactly dotted with all-stars either, making this night a fitting sendoff when one considers all that has happened this season and all that could happen in the off-season.
For book-keeping purposes, the Raptors would lose their 60th game of the season, the final loss courtesy of Miami’s 97-79 win.
The game was basically over before it even began by looking at Toronto’s frontcourt of James Johnson, Ed Davis and Joey Dorsey.
Kudos to Jerryd Bayless and DeMar DeRozan for playing hard, but the extended minutes each has been forced to play finally caught up to them.
You knew the Raptors were in for yet another long night when Eddie House is able to go off for 18 first-quarter points on 8-of-9 shooting.

According to a report in Wednesday’s edition of the New York Daily News, the NBA, with a labour war looming, plans to cancel its annual summer league in Las Vegas.
Too late. Something that looked an awful lot like a game from the annual July showcase of the league’s not-quite-ready-for-prime-time prospects broke out at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday night. Technically, it was the final night of the regular season of the world’s best basketball league. Realistically, the Miami Heat’s 97-79 win over the Raptors was a glorified pickup game manned by a cast of stiffs and scrubs and bad-contract afterthoughts that wouldn’t be out of place in the NBA Development League.
On the closing night of a season in which the Raptors marketed tickets on the merits of the star power of the opposition, perhaps it was totally fitting that the star power of the opposition didn’t play.
So while a sellout crowd forked out Raptor-mandated “premium” prices for the privilege of observing the league’s allegedly elite team, the throng didn’t get to see the marquee names ply their trade. The fans didn’t get to see Dwyane Wade, who spent the game in street clothes diagnosed with better things to do — specifically, to rest up for Saturday afternoon’s playoff opener against the Philadelphia 76ers. They didn’t get their semi-annual chance to boo Chris Bosh, who rode the bench in a warm-up suit for the duration.

“I mean a lot of it was the growing with these young people and teaching and stopping and showing and learning, showing it on videotape again and going through it in practice,” said coach Jay Triano. “I think that our guys have gotten better; there’s been growth but we’re still very, very young.
And very, very humbled after posting the third-worst record (16-66 in 1997-98; 21-61 in the inaugural 1995-96) in franchise history.
Playing a Heat team that sat Chris Bosh, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Mike Miller (all resting for Saturday’s playoff opener), Toronto did what it had done so many times this season: Get some good games from young kids, played hard and lost.
Eddie House had a career high 35 for Miami while Toronto got 21 from Jerryd Bayless and 18 from DeMar DeRozan.
Davis finished with just seven points and seven rebounds but said he will have learned lessons this year he’ll apply next season.
“I try to take everything personally and just try to find something every game to motivate me,” said Davis, “if it’s a personal matchup or a team that passed on me in the draft or whatever.
“I think for me, this is going to carry on for a long time.”.

The season ended the way it started, with another setback on their home court.
In between, the Toronto Raptors were hamstrung by an incredible litany of injuries, which the young team with a fragile psyche could ill afford trying to rebuild without Chris Bosh.
It was a trying time as well for Jay Triano, their Canadian-born head coach, who wrung about all he could from a young squad that stumbled to a 22-60 record to miss the National Basketball Association playoffs for a third straight year.
Wednesday night, after the Raptors were bounced 97-79 for their final indignity of the season at the Air Canada Centre, Triano was asked if he had any bittersweet memories of the season now that it was all said and done.
“It’s bitter,” Triano responded after a pause. “I mean, I don’t think anybody’s happy with our record.
“But at the same time there was some positives this year. The development of our players is probably the plus.”

“The coaching staff there did a really good job developing Ed, to the point where I think he has a home in the NBA,” said Terry, who played 10 seasons with the Dallas Mavericks, Heat, Washington Wizards and Denver Nuggets and was handed the nickname Chop by one of his coaches, Ron Rothstein.
“I just thought he didn’t have the weight, you know?’ Terry continued. “I thought he’d be in a lot of situations where he’d have three, four fouls early. But he’s found a way to hold his own in the paint. It’s a man’s game down there, and Ed hasn’t shied away. I just think he’s going to be a terrific pro.”

Upstairs in the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday morning, Dwyane Wade did his best to sum up what life on the most hated team in professional sports has been like this year.
“It’s been a traveling circus,” Wade, the Heat’s shooting guard, said.
When things have gone wrong for the Heat, coach Erik Spoelstra noted that there has been “extreme noise from the outside.” So it went on Wednesday before the Heat’s last regular season game, an essentially meaningless affair: There was a packed practice gym full of a bigger media contingent than has attended any Toronto Raptors’ shoot-around since opening day.
As the same time, the Raptors, who would go on to lose to the Heat 97-79, worked out in front of 19,800 empty seats with a depleted roster on the main court. When coach Jay Triano and Ed Davis spoke to the assembled media, there were two newspaper reporters, two cameras and a few others. As an added insult, one of the few questions Triano was asked was about how the team working out upstairs has been doing, and specifically, how Chris Bosh, the Raptor-turned-Heat star, has fit in.

Toronto Star Game Pictures

Sunshine Girl - 14.04.11

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SUNshine Girl Lindsay, 26, is a bartender who likes darts and tennis. On the other hand, we're a darts player who likes bartenders, especially the hazel-eyed kind.